Kingdom Hearts is quite the interesting game. You have Squaresoft and Disney, two very successful companies in their respective fields, both lending a hand in the development of what should be an absolute blockbuster game. In many respects, it is, but the game falls a bit short in a few areas.

Kingdom Hearts is all about production. Everything from the presentation, to the music, to the animation, to the voicework is absolutely top-notch. Working all those Disney characters and worlds into a game which also features Final Fantasy and original Square characters and environments would seem like a difficult task. Squaresoft (with the help of Disney) had not much of a problem at all. The cartoony real-time visuals are excellently done, and the CG scenes are of course, your typical Square excellence.

Being an action RPG, Kingdom Hearts does not skimp on the action sequences. In fact there is just a little too much combat/action for my tastes, with a sometimes never-ending stream of Heartless always tracking you down. Sora will sometimes encounter a new batch of enemies every few moments, and you'll find yourself hacking and slashing your way out of plenty of situations. It helps when the CPU controlled Goofy and Donald, or the Little Mermaid and others are there to take some of the heat, but the battle frequency and simple control scheme starts to annoy after a while. The boss battles, however, are fantastic and mostly a lot of fun. The control is pretty typical real-time action RPG. Spells can be cast, and items used, but most combat consists of running, jumping and attacking and then collecting the experience and dropped currency/items. The only other real annoyance comes from the sometimes nauseating, shifting camera. Not many people were fans of the shooter sequences in between Kingdom Heart's worlds, though as with any Square made game, you have to expect something like that to pop-up. I personally never cared much for them.

The aforementioned music and voices are some of the best aspects of the game. The voicework for the Disney characters is definitely authentic, and the Square characters are well voiced by some famous young actors/actresses. The voices also nicely sync up with the lines of dialog. The orchestrated soundtrack is much better in quality than previous midi-sounding Final Fantasy tunes, and not much of it becomes annoying.

The real payoff in Kingdom Hearts is the vast amount of classic and contemporary Disney characters in the game, and how they interact with Sora, Riki, Kairi and others. While some are just filler characters which only perform very minor functions, others play a major role in the game. The game is worth playing, if only for this aspect.

Despite the sometimes annoying, repetitive combat sequences, Kingdom Hearts is filled with plenty to see and do. Disney fans will flip over the characters and worlds, and Final Fantasy lovers will appreciate the cool FF cameos and references. The game is not exclusively geared for children either, so it is neither totally sugar-coated or a push over of a game. It's challenging enough for modern RPG players, and playable enough for those maybe not used to this type of game. The few annoying bits aside, Kingdom Hearts is definitely worth playing.